Club News

A Major Equipment Donation

Carol Eubanks donated a large collection of radio equipment to the club in memory of her late husband, Gregory Eubanks, W5GTX. The donation includes HF, VHF, and UHF gear spanning decades of ham radio history.

The donation includes:

• HF/VHF/UHF all-mode transceivers: an ICOM IC-746PRO, a Yaesu FT-857D, a Yaesu FT-897, and an ICOM IC-706MKIIG still new in box
• VHF/UHF handhelds and mobiles: an ICOM ID-51A Plus2, an ICOM IC-T90A, a Yaesu VX-8R, a Yaesu FT3D, an Alinco DR-150T mobile, and a handheld scanner
• Two portable go-kit radios, a Yaesu FT-818 and a Xiegu X6100, already packed into their own cases with batteries and accessories, ready to grab and go
• A ZUMspot-RPi UHF hotspot kit for digital modes
• An LDG Z-100A automatic antenna tuner
• A Chameleon 5:1 broadband HF transformer with a 17' stainless steel whip and ground stake for portable antenna setups

Starting next semester, all of this equipment is available for any dues-paying member to borrow.

QRP Labs Kit Build

On April 26th, members gathered on the WEB patio to build QRP Labs kits together. Options ranged from the CW-only QCX and QCX+ to the multi-mode QMX and QMX+, with members able to borrow club or personal tools and get help from anyone who'd built one before.

Foxhunt Team Solves Airport Radio Interference

On March 29th, members traveled to Bryan Coulter Airfield to track down interference jamming the airport's main communications channel with a constant, unmodulated carrier. The team took bearings from the terminal parking lot and the southern property line, then split into small groups to search hangars with directional antennas.

In under 30 minutes, the team traced the signal to a specific hangar bay. The bay's owner helped identify the source: an aircraft radio with a stuck push-to-talk button, left on in a golf cart connected to a battery charger and transmitting continuously. The owner discarded the faulty microphone and the team retrieved it from the trash as a club souvenir.

Nine members participated: Seungheon Oh, Travis KI5TMS, Braxton N5REV, Christopher KJ5IBX, Dave W5QZ, Ian AE5ID, Matthew KJ5IIF, James KI5UXW, and Katherine KT5KMF.

Joint Radio Training with Texas Aggie Storm Chasers

The Texas Aggie Storm Chasers (TASC) use ham radio for storm chasing, so W5AC hosted a joint event outside the Oceanography and Meteorology building to give TASC members a chance to practice using a radio and learn more about the hobby. Hams from both organizations had fun and learned a lot from each other.

SOTA Activation on W5T/ST-012

James KI5UXW, Hudson Spillers KL4LJ, and Matthew Cadman KJ5IIF spent a weekend activating SOTA summit W5T/ST-012 at Hill Country State Natural Area near Bandera, Texas, also a POTA entity (US-3504).

After testing gear the night before in James's Austin backyard, the crew settled on Matthew's Super Antenna MP-1, James's ARRL EFHW kit, and a 20m dipole as backup. At the trailhead they ran into fellow POTA activator KG5OWB, running his own station from a truck-mounted hitch vertical. The hike to the summit took about two hours up a crumbly limestone trail.

James ran 10m SSB on a Xiegu G90 with a 66' EFHW strung over a tree, while Matthew set up further down the hill running FT8 on an IC-705. "The best operating environment that I've ever been in," James wrote afterward. The S0 noise floor meant 20W and a wire antenna could be heard for miles, with a pile-up on nearly every call. James worked 36 stations in two hours; the rest of the crew worked 34-35 each, including a contact with a good friend, KI5ZWV.

SOUP Weather Balloon Launches

Every spring, the Atmospheric Sciences department's Student Operational Upper-air Program (SOUP) gives meteorology students hands-on experience launching weather balloons. This spring, Texas A&M was one of several universities asked to help the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes study atmospheric rivers, launching 19 balloons over the course of February.

A handful of W5AC members who are also meteorology students took part, coordinating over HTs on the Texas Aggie Storm Chasers' frequency between two groups: one preparing and launching the balloon near the meteorology building, the other running data-collection computers at the observatory, tracking each balloon's radiosonde data (GPS position, temperature, pressure, and humidity) as it climbed.